Whiteside was never actually a member of the Rockets. Whiteside was waived by the Kings in 2012. He then played in the NDBL with Sioux Falls and was later traded to the Vipers. That's what people are referring to, he played on our developmental team but he wasn't ever under contract to the Rockets. Whiteside later played in Lebanon and China and then he had another stint in the NDBL. That 2nd tour in the DNBL included another brief time with the Vipers (still not under contact to the Rockets). After Whiteside was waived by the Kings in January '11, he was available to be signed by any NBA team until he signed with Memphis in September 2014. By November '14, he had been released by Memphis, resigned and released again after 1 day. He never appeared in an NBA game for Memphis. He then signed with Miami at the end of November 2014.
I'll cut Morey some slack on a few of these guys. Lowry netted us a pick that was part of the Harden deal. Turning down a 4th year option for Dragic in favor of giving Lin a ton of money was beyond stupid.....however if we were eventually gonna have to hand Dragic the kind of extension he got with Miami, he was a goner anyway. The only difference is we would've gotten something for him at the February 2015 trade deadline rather than having to give up a first rounder in order to dump Lin's contract. Livingston hurts, but he got cut by a third of the NBA before he finally found a home with the Warriors. Scola was a cost-cutting move. Lots of teams do that. No argument on Patterson though. He sure would help right now given how pathetic our PF situation is. We didn't even get much for him when he was dealt. Thomas Robinson(who we then dumped to clear caproom for Howard) and Cisco(who was good for one playoff series before regressing into a scrub). And definitely it was a colossal mistake not signing Lowry when we had the chance in July 2014. Imagine if we had locked him in at the rate Toronto resigned him for(I believe around 12 mil/yr) and then matched Parsons. That would've been a much more talented team even than the one that won 56 games last season(well, assuming Parsons hadn't hurt his knee like he did in Dallas). What drives me nutz is that the 5 players you listed are either PGs or PFs, our 2 biggest weaknesses. I don't understand why when Morey manages to land a solid player at those positions, he quickly unloads them onto another team.
